Plato explains himeros by paronomastic derivation from verbal forms built on the root hie- / hiei- (“to rush, impel, set in motion”) combined with words designating flow (rhein, rhoē): himeros is motivated as the name of a desire that flows (rhei) while impelling (iemenos) and striving toward (ephiemenos) its objects. The etymology is thus not morphological in the historical-linguistic sense, but semantic-phonetic, grounding the noun himeros in a cluster of near-homophonous verbs that express directed, rushing motion.

This etymology is embedded in a triadic cluster of specific desire-terms—himeros (“yearning desire,” 419e3–420a4), pothos (“longing,” 420a4–8), and erōs (“sexual desire,” 420a9–b4)—whose sequencing articulates a nuanced phenomenology of desire rather than a set of unrelated lexical curiosities. Himeros is analyzed as a present-directed and immediate desire: it arises from a flowing impulse (rhoē) that actively draws and pulls the soul toward what is currently before it. Pothos, by contrast, is described privatively in relation to himeros: it is desire for the same object, but precisely in its absence, thus marking a temporal and spatial displacement that converts immediacy into lack. Erōs is then distinguished not by presence or absence but by origin: it is an externally induced desire (eisrhein exōthen), entering through perception (the eyes) and foreign to the soul’s own internal motion. The triplet thus differentiates desire along two axes—mode of presence (himeros / pothos) and mode of causation (erōs)—and exemplifies a broader strategy of using etymology to map fine-grained psychological and conceptual distinctions rather than to provide merely historical word origins.

These etymologies are embedded within a tradition of Greek myth and cult in which himeros, pothos, and erōs are not merely abstract mental states but closely related divine or daimonic figures with differentiated functions. Literary and archaeological evidence suggests, however, that this differentiation was neither stable nor consistently articulated. Cornutus (Greek Theology 25, 47.11–48.4 Lang = 40.1–17 Torres) reports the tradition of multiple Erōtes accompanying Aphrodite, but treats “Eros”, “Himeros”, and “Pothos” as alternative names of a single divinity. Pausanias (Description of Greece I.43.6.1–6, 101.18–23 Rocha-Pereira) reports that the temple of Aphrodite at Megara housed statues of Eros, Himeros, and Pothos, but pointedly adds: “if indeed their deeds correspond to the difference in their names” (εἰ δὴ διάφορά ἐστι κατὰ ταὐτὸ τοῖς ὀνόμασι καὶ τὰ ἔργα σφίσι, I.43.6.6–7, 101.23–4 Rocha-Pereira), thereby indicating that the three figures are not as easily distinguished as their names might suggest. For the literary relationship between Eros, Himeros, and Pothos, see Spencer 1932, 121; Weiss 1998, 31–2; Calame 1999, 30–3; Stafford 2013, 175–83; for the archaeological evidence, see Greifenhagen 1957, 34–9; Stafford 2013, 183–208.

The broader philosophical context of Plato’s etymology of himeros at Cratylus 419e3–420a4is indicated by its derivation from rhein (“to flow”) or rhoē (“flow”). This etymology belongs to a wider sequence in which Plato explains names through flux terms; thus erōs, too, is derived from eisrhein (“to flow into,” 420a9–b4). This pervasive flow vocabulary reflects a provisional adoption of the Heraclitean doctrine, endorsed by the character Cratylus, according to which all beings are in constant flux and names naturally encode processes rather than stable essences. Within this framework, naturalistic semantics—the view that names are correct by nature (phusei) rather than by convention (thesei)—finds its strongest motivation: if reality itself is fundamentally processual, then names must mirror motion, change, and causal activity. Through these flow-based etymologies, Plato radicalizes and dialectically tests both Heraclitean flux and naturalistic semantics, only to expose their joint inadequacy as a foundation for stable meaning and cognition—the central critical aim of the Cratylus. (On the relationship between naturalistic semantics and flux theory in the Cratylus, cf. e.g. Sedley 2003; Ademollo 2011; Meißner 2023.)

Plato offers an alternative etymology of himeros in the Phaedrus (251c5–7; 255b7–c4) in terms of epienai + meros + rhoē / rheuma. While this analysis likewise grounds himeros in basic flux vocabulary (rhoē, rheuma), it differs from the Cratylus etymology in an important respect: instead of deriving the name from verbal forms expressing directed motion or impulse (hiesthai, ephiesthai), the Phaedrus explains himeros through the physical imagery of certain “parts” (merē) of the beautiful object that come upon (epionta) and flow (rheonta) into the soul. In the Cratylus, by contrast, himeros is linguistically motivated by participial forms of the verbal root (hiē-), emphasizing the dynamic activity of rushing and striving itself rather than the material transmission of particles.